Here’s Why You Should Reevaluate Your Customer Survey Approach

Here’s Why You Should Reevaluate Your Customer Survey Approach

As company decisions increasingly become data- and customer-driven, it’s tempting to go into feedback overdrive and attempt to collect as much data as you can get your hands on. But asking for too much feedback can actually have harmful effects, such as a decline in response rates or lower-quality feedback. Ironically, you could end up having less data with diluted value.

How Much Is Too Much?

Everyone likes to feel like his or her feedback is taken into account, but at a certain point, it can annoy people and sour them on your brand. For instance, I’m relatively brand loyal to Delta Air Lines, but they keep asking me for feedback on every flight. It’s too much. It's also useless to tie Net Promoter questions (ie "Would I recommend Delta") based on a single flight for someone who flies them 50+ times a year. That's garbage in, garbage out data.

When companies over-survey their most frequent and loyal users, it almost feels like punishment. Don’t negatively reinforce good behavior. Instead, follow these three tips to stop feedback fatigue and collect better data.

Survey Strategically

Many companies are so obsessed with acquiring data that they aren’t thinking strategically about what information to collect and how to use it. Companies need to be smarter about what they collect.

Rather than asking customers for feedback at every touchpoint, set parameters on how often it makes sense for you to survey. For instance, we survey our clients once per quarter. The goal is to get a response every six months. So if a client responds, she is skipped the next quarter. If she doesn’t reply, we’ll go ahead and ping her next quarter.

Also, you don’t need to ask every client every single question. By mixing it up, you can get the data you need without each person having to go into great detail about everything.

Be Truthful About Time

A few year's back, I had a great stay at The Westin Riverwalk, San Antonio, so I was happy to fill out the feedback form. But when I realized I was only halfway through after 10 minutes, I abandoned the survey and left feeling frustrated.

The same thing will happen to your customers if you’re not upfront about how long your survey will take. The sweet spot is fewer than five minutes, and any longer than 11 minutes leads to “significant abandonment rates,” according to Survey Monkey.

David Niu, founder of TINYhr, told us that short customer surveys not only show respect for customers’ time, but also make clients more likely to respond. “Short, simple customer surveys can lead to response rates of 50 percent or more, which is considerably higher than the 0.5 to 2 percent response rates many organizations get from client surveys,” Niu said.

Measure Success

Never ask a question to get data that you don’t plan to measure or act on. This is just a waste of everyone’s time. If you outsource, review what the vendor is sending as well as response rates. It’s important to understand whether surveying your customers is actually bothering them more than incentivizing them to give you the feedback you’re seeking.

We use a system called Client Heartbeat that emails our clients every quarter. The survey asks how likely the client would be to recommend us to a friend on a scale of 1 to 10. It also asks a few specific rating questions about dimensions of our performance. The whole thing takes 60 seconds to fill out.

We’ve found that surveying clients every few months is frequent enough for us to catch any potential problems. For example, we’ve noticed that clients below a certain level on the first question tend to leave within three to six months. These surveys have alerted us to the fact that some clients were unhappier than we thought and allowed us to address the situation before they felt ready to leave.

Conducting too many surveys can be expensive and time-consuming. Save money and your clients’ time by being more strategic about how you ask for feedback, ensuring you get the data you need to drive strategic business decisions without wearing out your company or your customers.

Robert is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners. Join the 40,000 global leaders who follow his inspirational weekly Friday Forward and have it delivered directly to you inbox by signing up at fridayfwd.com.

Laura Artibello

Author in Waiting inspiration Igniting Souls. AAE soon. Left, not gone from DDG or Mississauga Available, never free ;)

6 年

3 questions first time out. That's our philosophy Data Direct Group Warm your audience, be prepared to act on all or don't ask. Our mantra Debbie Major.

Ashok Bansal

F&B in Hospitality, Catering, Fine dining and Healthcare - speeding up the change to higher quality and profitability!

6 年

Absolutely apt. Duration of Survey, Frequency of repeat Survey, and the Relevance of Questions asked in the Survey - key things rightly emphasised. One more thing - and a very critical one - is to insulate the Survey from the Relationship effect. Unless it's a fully digital and faceless relationship, the surveys are entrusted to the same relationship manager - and more often than not, a positive survey feedback is more a result of his influence rather than an honest actionable feedback.

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